


and the hand that you reach out is empty

by venndaai



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Dragon Age: Inquisition - Trespasser DLC, M/M, Morning After
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-19
Updated: 2019-11-19
Packaged: 2021-02-13 09:29:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21492091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/venndaai/pseuds/venndaai
Summary: The morning after the Exalted Council, Krem wakes up in Dorian's bed.
Relationships: Cremisius "Krem" Aclassi & Iron Bull, Cremisius "Krem" Aclassi/Dorian Pavus, Iron Bull/Dorian Pavus
Comments: 11
Kudos: 112





	and the hand that you reach out is empty

Krem woke up. It was a sudden awakening, asleep one moment, conscious the next, but he didn’t really feel awake, or rested, for that matter. It was as though the night had turned into the morning with no interruption, except that he couldn’t right at that moment remember much about the night. Sunlight was beating down on his eyelids, and he opened them, and looked at an unfamiliar wood-tiled ceiling. His mouth tasted like death, and his stomach churned. There was a white static in his ears. 

It wasn’t the first time he’d woken up hungover in a strange bed. The important thing was to move. Do something. Get up, wash his face or climb out the window or something, anything.

His guts complained, and that cut through the static, a little. He rolled onto his stomach, pushed himself up onto his elbows and focused on breathing deeply. The sheets beneath him were silk, pale and smooth. The finest allotted to guests in the Summer Palace. The empress would probably be irritated if Krem threw up on them. 

“Are you all right?” asked the other person in the bed, in the tone of someone who didn’t really care, but was making a vague effort anyway. 

Krem turned his head slightly. Dorian Pavus was sitting upright, back against the bed’s headboard, one knee pulled tightly against his chest. A hand curled around an empty bottle. Looking as though he hadn’t moved in hours. He was wearing uncharacteristically rumpled court finery; the hem of his shirt was stained the red of wine. Memory stirred: Krem became aware of his own sweat-soaked shirt, trousers, chest bindings, gone unpleasantly clammy in the morning chill. Right, they hadn’t bothered to remove much clothing.

Over the years, Krem had, a couple of times, idly pondered being in this situation. 

He’d never thought it would feel like this.

“I’m fine,” he said, and didn’t recognize his own voice.

Dorian must have found it strange, too, and that seemed to penetrate the mage’s reverie a little. He turned his chiseled chin slightly, away from Krem. “It’s perfectly natural,” he said. “The urge to affirm life after being confronted with its opposite. Nothing to be ashamed of. Back home, the most debauched parties are always the ones the night after a publicized assassination.”

“Can’t say I was ever invited to those kinds of parties.”

He was proud of how close to normal that sounded, at least in his own ears.

Dorian snorted. “Fair enough. I suppose I’ll be headed back there, tomorrow.”

When he threw the bottle it exploded in a tiny shower of crystal at the edge of the fireplace.

In the aftermath of the crash it was very quiet in the extravagant room. The walls must be very thick, Krem thought. The fire had clearly been dead for a while, which explained the chill. He wanted very intensely to be down in the barracks with the men, except that now seemed as distant and forbidden a land as Tevinter.

“You don’t have to,” Krem heard himself say. Maybe as much to break that suffocating silence as anything else. “I do get why you’re doing it, and it’s noble of you. But there’ll always be a place for you with the Chargers.”

The snort became a laugh, cold and bitter. “Really?” Dorian said. “You really think we’d be able to look each other in the eye each morning?”

“I’d try,” Krem said.

Dorian laced his hands together, and Krem noticed, with faint guilt at even looking, that this was to stop them shaking. “If you start to say ‘it’s what he would have wanted’,” I _ will _set something on fire.”

“You told me what happened, personally,” Krem said. None of this was helping, he knew that, and yet he couldn’t just shut up. “I owe you for that.”

“Yes,” Dorian said, “I’m sure my motives for that were very noble, as evidenced by where we are this morning.” 

The air was thick with Krem’s desire to give Dorian a rude gesture for that, with Dorian’s certain desire to tell Krem to get the fuck out. Instead silence settled again, heavy, unbroken, because Dorian was right. Neither of them wanted to be alone. Neither of them wanted to be with anyone else. 

No one else could understand. 

Unspoken sentences were filling up the empty spaces between the luxurious bed and the gilded walls. _ Was there ever any hint- Did you notice any sign- Does the world make more sense to you right now than it does to me? _

Krem couldn’t be sure whether the fact that neither of them spoke was to their credit or not. Could be they both recognized the words would be cruel, and even now, were good enough men to avoid cruelty. Could be simply that neither of them wanted to act worse than the other.

Odd to cling to such scraps of pride, even now. 

“Excuse me,” Krem said, and rolled off the beautiful stained sheets, and stumbled into the little antechamber, where he tried to throw up into a gold-rimmed basin, and couldn’t. 

When the nausea had receded somewhat he straightened, and looked at his own face in the ornate mirror. It was the right kind of mirror for the Tevinter Ambassador’s room; he could imagine Dorian oiling his moustache in front of it. Krem usually made do with the little square of silvered glass that had come in a leather-wrapped box with a couple of little scissors and bottles of unfamiliar substances, the stamp of a Val Royeaux barbershop embossed on the lid. _ You might not have to shave every day like me but you’ve got all that hair on your head you like to keep neat, right? Happy birthday, Krem _ _ Fraîche. _

_ Aw, chief, you shouldn’t have. _

His own eyes stared back at him, accusing. There were dark bruises along his neck and shoulder. A memory resurfaced. Dorian’s mouth on his skin. Murmuring._ I don’t want to think anymore. _ Alcohol burning in his throat. 

When he went back into the room Dorian looked like he hadn’t moved a milimeter. He looked like one of the statues the alti loved putting up around Minrathous, of someone beautiful and dead. 

So when he spoke, it was weirdly shocking and almost disturbing, like one of those marble monuments to masculine perfection had parted its lips and addressed Krem in the street. “Cremisius. There’s a leather bag in the middle drawer of the dresser.”

That was all. Krem considered the fact that he wasn’t any altus’s manservant, weighed it against the probability that the statue that was Dorian would crack and shatter if it made any significant movements. He went to the dresser. Inside the small leather bag was a pair of crystals, each elaborately fashioned into a pendant.

“One of them was for him,” Dorian said, from the bed. “Outrageously expensive to make, of course. You take it, or I’ll just smash it like that bottle.”

“What is it?”

“A sending enchantment,” Dorian said. “Carries the voice across vast distances. I doubt we’ll have anything to say to each other, but I suppose you never know.”

Krem slipped the cord around his neck. The crystal was heavier than it looked. “I’ll use it,” he said. “I’ll check in.”

“That might not be the healthiest thing for either of us,” Dorian said, but on the other hand, he was the one who had given Krem the thing. “You’re very much under no obligation to form some kind of pity club with me. One ill advised liaison is already more than I deserve.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Krem said.

Dorian laughed, a sound of vast unbearable pain. Krem turned. Dorian had pulled both knees to his chest, and his head was bent. “I know,” he snarled. “_I wish it was_.”

Krem nodded. “Yeah,” he said. "Me too."


End file.
